The invention is directed to an approach for implementing performance kits for computing systems.
Many computer software and hardware vendors provide performance kits that are used to test the functionality and performance of computer hardware, software, and software-hardware combinations. For example, a database vendor may provide a performance kit that is used to test and measure the performance of that vendor's database products on various types of computing hardware, data, and/or operating systems.
One purpose of the performance kit is to provide “benchmarks” that can be used to compare one set of hardware/software against another set of hardware/software. In general, a benchmark is the result of running a computer program, or a set of programs, in order to assess the relative performance of the program, the hardware, and/or software/hardware configuration by running a number of standard tests and trials.
Hardware vendors may use the benchmark results during the development and testing phase of computing products. The hardware vendors may also use the benchmark results to compare performance capabilities against the capabilities of rival companies, e.g., for marketing or competitive analysis purposes.
The end customers of the vendors may also wish to obtain and implement performance kits for the products provided by the vendors. There are many reasons for a customer to desire the results of performance testing. For example, the customer may want the performance test to perform “system sizing”, to verify the correct set of hardware and software that should be purchased by the customer to handle an anticipated workload. The performance tests and benchmarks may also be used by the customer to implement and optimize configuration settings for the computing system being used by the customer. For example, it is important for a database administrator (DBA) to understand the point at which system resources and performance are and are not adequate to handle different types of workloads. Performance kits may be used by DBAs to obtain this information. Once the DBA has this type of information, the DBA can use that data to determine system bottlenecks that can be corrected to optimize database performance.
Many computing vendors distribute performance kits that a customer will separately obtain and install onto a given software/hardware platform. Currently, however, there is no easy delivery model which can make that performance kit easily and efficiently consumable for the vendors' customers. Instead, the customers must undergo a lengthy and complex integration process to get the performance kit to work in the customer's target environment.
To address this and other problems, the present invention provides an improved approach for implementing and distributing performance kits that avoids the problems of the prior approaches. Other and additional objects, features, and advantages of the invention are described in the detailed description, figures, and claims.